Postcards From Paradise

To the person who received one of these greetings in the mail while enduring a frigid Wisconsin January or soggy Michigan March, it must have seemed like a dispatch from Shangri-la.

Today Southwest Florida postcards from the 1900s through 1940s are quaint curiosities, artifacts of nostalgia. But to the adventurous souls who mailed them to friends, they were trophies, tangible proof that there was indeed a promised land, and that they had found it. In this idealized world, trees bowed from the weight of oranges, fish teemed in turquoise waters and begged to be caught, and every night the sun set in a spectacular explosion of regal reds and rich purples.

These were the days before the Mighty Mouse domesticated the state and before the interstate system allowed travelers to hop on one smooth road and set the cruise control for the next 800 miles. People had to work to come here. But they came, lured by well-placed advertisements and by postcards like these. Not yet a serious topic for economists and pundits, tourism was the province of canny and spirited boosters. From the "Florida Fruit Girls" of the 1900s-an early version of cheesecake-to the painstakingly rendered and colored pictures of the boats along the Caloosahatchee and the sun worshippers on the beaches of Naples, carefully chosen images beckoned visitors. Carefully chosen-and carefully doctored. The tarpon were big, but they could always be made bigger; the sunsets were colorful, but they could be made redder. If, as so many maintain, our state is a natural haven for dreamers and schemers, that reputation began with these outsize fish and flag-waving beauties.

What is most remarkable, looking at these postcards, is not how much has changed but how little. Graceful palm trees still sway in the Gulf breezes, and waves lap at the curved shoreline along Gordon's Pass. Although grand estate homes have replaced many of the cottages in Old Naples, some of the rooflines in the street scene are still familiar. The boxy autos barreling past the palms on the road to Fort Myers Beach may amuse us with their design, but their destination is as popular and populated as this image foreshadows. The real difference is that this paradise is no longer just a nice place to visit but a viable place to live. "I will be home by the time you get this," a man writes to his wife on one postcard, calling to mind today's popular real estate slogan, one visitors might consider as they leave our beautiful beaches and blue waters: "If you lived here, you'd be home now."